Returning to my 'To-Do' List

byEnglishLady

282 followers

11 years ago

Since starting my journey at WA I am finding more and more that I am constantly performing a juggling act with all my daily tasks.

Being a self-employed writer, my workload can be pretty sporadic at the best of times, and I will often get weeks of bookings with deadlines to meet, followed by a few days here and there with no bookings at all. It is at these quieter times I return to writing my very first fiction book, which is taking much longer than anticipated, and to work on my first site with WA. On top of this, I volunteer for our local Food Bank and have been 'promoted' to team coordinator with a lot more responsibilities.

Oh, and did I fail to mention that I am also a single mum to a 13 year old son that I home educate too?

Last year I wrote and published a book about de-cluttering your home, and one of my simple tips within the book was to make a 'To-Do' list with all the tasks needed to do in each room. I suggested using a big thick red marker pen to cross off each task as you complete it - a very satisfying feeling is to see lots of thick red lines and ticks at the end of the day!

I am finding that I need to draw on this simple but effective method to de-clutter my mind, and write down each freelance booking, household task, educational project, volunteer related task, and put them in order of priority.

This is proving to be very cathartic as I can write everything down each morning and then concentrate on the just one job at a time without fretting about the others, or constantly have to remind myself from memory what I should be doing next.

One important thing I did remember from when I wrote my book was to ALWAYS schedule in regular 5 minute breaks that were just for me! I can grab a coffee, catch up with the news, go outside for some fresh air, or simply sit and chat to my son about nothing at all.

Taking on all the extra work and training involved with WA will be so rewarding in the long run, but if you try to shoe-horn too much into your day, you could end up with burn-out.

Returning to my 'To-Do' list is proving effective, and if you decide to do this too to help organise your time better, never forget to schedule in some well deserved 'me-time' to keep your sanity intact :)